Software Globalisation in Finland: A State-of-the-practice Survey

During recent years software globalisation has become an important part of the whole software industry. Adaptation of software to different market-areas is not an easy or straightforward task. The adaptation process usually involves two participants: a software developer and a localisation vendor. We interviewed Finnish software industry representatives in order to find out the current state of globalisation processes and practices and to inquire their views on software globalisation. On the basis of the interviews, it seems that globalisation practices vary greatly and localisation is often considered as purely translation. In addition, there seems to be many problems that could be solved by using more defined processes and by enhancing the communication and co-operation between software developers and localisation vendors.